+ 
= 
. imo ymmv .
Posted on 04/17/2025 10:05:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As China imposes export controls on rare earth elements, the U.S. would be unable to fill a potential shortfall, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies — and this could threaten Washington’s military capabilities.
Amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s escalating tariffs on China, Beijing earlier this month imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements and magnets used in defense, energy and automotive technologies.
The new restrictions — which encompass the medium and heavy rare earth elements samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium — will require Chinese companies to secure special licenses to export the resources.
Though it remains to be seen exactly how China will implement this policy, the CSIS report, published Monday, warns that it will likely result in a pause in exports as Beijing establishes the licensing system, and cause disruptions in supply to some U.S. firms.
The New York Times reported earlier this week that a pause in China’s rare earth element exports was already occurring.
As China effectively holds a monopoly over the supply of global heavy rare earths processing, such restrictions pose a serious threat to the U.S., particularly its defense technology sector.
“The United States is particularly vulnerable for these supply chains,” CSIS warned, emphasizing that rare earths are crucial for a range of advanced defense technologies and are used in types of fighter jets, submarines, missiles, radar systems and drones.
Along with the export controls, Beijing has placed 16 U.S. entities — all but one in the defense and aerospace industries — on its export control list. Placement on the list prevents companies from receiving “dual-use goods,” including the aforementioned rare earth elements.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
China’s rare-earth monopoly has been a headline for AT LEAST the last 10 years.
And besides a lot of government reports and “analyst” hand-wringing - almost nothing has been done about it.
The resources are out there. Cheap supply from China has inhibited exploration and development of those resources. Although it may take some time, I’m sure we can do just fine without China.
+ = . imo ymmv .
Other sources or here. The situation is temporary.
Ok, that makes gives even more incentive to find a domestic source. That is the whole point. WIN- WIN.
We used to maintain supplies of critical minerals.
Fixed it.
Greenland offers a treasure trove of rare earth minerals. President Trump can provide Greenlanders with royalty payments for their rare earth minerals. Similar to what the U.S. did with indigenous Alaskan’s to drill for oil in Alaska. Very good deal for America.
Well then, I guess we’ll need to reopen our rare earths mines and reopen some processing centers.
Screw Gaia.
Of course we know how we got here.
Yep, we have rare earths, we stopped mining because importing was cheaper.
Stand up a national effort with Elon in charge. Rare earths aren’t so much rare, as the separation and processing to refine them is complex and expensive. Those are solvable problems. But private companies may need some public assistance until it becomes profitable. Closely monitored and resultsbased.grants under the National Defense Authorization Act.
Big shot deep state globalist NGO housed in their fabulously luxurious digs in DC.
It’s not like all the rare earths all somehow managed to wind up deposited in China. Decades of environmental regulation have destroyed US capacity to extract minerals from our own soil. The time to fix it is now.
Google NIOCORP
We can thank the tree huggers and EPA for not allowing any mining of these “rare earth” minerals.
In fact, in the 1980s the US was the largest producer of rare earth minerals. As I mentioned, they are abundant but difficult to separate and refine, which is to say, it’s costly. In addition the chemicals used are not ones the EPA is happy to see on US soil. Since demanad was much lower, the private companies opted to outsource their needs and the CCP nationalized production in China and has since weaponized it as demand grew. China also encouraged demand to grow by producing cheap rare earth-based products such as neodymium magnets and lithium batteries.
SO the bottom line is: The lower costs associated with Chinese mining and processing made it more attractive for US companies to rely on imports rather than investing in domestic production. Doing so also bypassed environment scrutiny since China didn’t care about that.
In other words, we did it to ourselves.
Time to open them up and get some processing plants going. Not exactly hard to figure out. Override any objection with National Security.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.